Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore is a mesmerizing read—dreamlike, surreal, and deeply emotional. Haruki Murakami weaves together mystery, fate, and identity in a way that keeps you thinking long after you finish the book. The storytelling is strange in the best way, with rich symbolism, unforgettable characters, and a quiet sense of wonder throughout. It’s not a traditional novel, but if you enjoy thought-provoking fiction with depth and atmosphere, this book is a masterpiece. Highly recommend.

Murakami asked his writing class to submit plot twists and characters for a novel, daring them to be as outrageous as possible. The following list materialized: A retarded man who can interview cats A 15-year-old who has an affair with a 55-year-old Johnnie Walker, as a murder victim Colonel Sanders, as a pimp Leeches falling from the sky A child who kills his father and marries his mother A transvestite librarian A magical stone A pop song named Kafka on the Shore He assured the class that he would incorporate them all into a seamless, compelling narrative. And he did. Of course that isn't how Kafka on the Shore was written. But it reads like it, just as The Wind-up Bird Chronicle--my other dip into Murakamania--reads like another continuous, illogical but convincingly vivid hallucination. This is Murakami's gift. He is a vivid realist, describing the sensory and psychological realities of everyday life. He writes without irony--at least any that can be discerned. Thus he can make the reader believe, stay attentive and tuned in. Comparable to Salvador Dali, whose command of 19th century realist devices enabled him to paint convincing melted watches, flaming giraffes and floating crucifixions, Murakami's realism can make the most unlikely events vivid and palpable. However, the multiple surreal and supernatural elements recall Stephen King--not a good association--in the way King could never seem to confine himself to one supernatural device when three or four could make the plot so much juicier. And Murikami's elements, like King's, are often unrelated, seemingly trotted in without rhyme or reason. There is no attempt to define a coherent world beyond the physical one, no supernatural cosmology; we are given only various hints that reality is porous, and that physical laws can be interrupted in various ways at various times, at the whim of the gods--or the author. These supernatural events don't build toward any one revelatory or climactic event, however, but are strung together like a necklace. This, I am inclined to argue, is Murakami's weakness. But then I had the same trouble with Halldor Laxness' Under the Glacier, which for me seemed eventually to disintegrate--melt?--into a dreamscape. Kafka, Beckett-even T.C. Boyle in Descent of Man--could build and sustain haunted quasisurreal worlds. But I am not sure of this criticism, that these comparisons are fair. I would suggest that everyone who is an audience for serious literature take a dip into Murakami. A singularity in the Modernist tradition, he represents the non plus ultra in a certain direction. As with Proust, Joyce, Gertrude Stein, etc. and more recently Handke and Sorrentino, reading him thus allows one to test one's assumptions about reality, literary limits, narrative expectations, emotional involvement, the human willingness to be enthralled by an obvious travesty. Wallace Stevens once made a statement: The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe it willingly. Murakami takes us to that level of self-conscious complicity. He succeeds in giving us the sensation that we are creating the story with him. By its very meandering, seemingly unfettered outlandishness, his story keeps us self-conscious about our suspension of disbelief, and thus of our active participation in the "fiction." In my experience no one has done that to this extent. So I can say to the worldly reader: read Murakami; you may discover something new about yourself, the mind, the imagination and maybe the possibilities of literature. And have an enjoyable ride, perhaps, in the process. Murakami knows well what he's about, and he shares it with us. He plants clues. The name "Kafka" is one. More to the point, early on the 15-year-old Kafka Tamura himself reads The Thousand and One Nights. Sheherazade's gift was to keep her auditor enthralled and expectant above all, and this is the author's forte. This book, like Chronicle, is outrageous, self-indulgent, whimsical, highly disciplined and tightly organized. It has the intense, insistent authority of optimal writing. Great literature or eccentric entertainment, I couldn't put it down.

Well, this was impressive. I have read one other Haruki Murakami novel some years ago, that being Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and while I really enjoyed that book, this one I loved. And besides, I can feel echoes of that one in this one, and those kind of connections bring me great joy, whether I am projecting them or not. What to even say about this book? What to say about Haruki Murakami? His works have the interestingly dichotomous ability to mix feelings of the small and the large, the personal and the sweeping, the banal and the mystical. Often while reading I'll find myself thinking... "What the f***?" And I can answer this only with the mantra: "No idea, it's Murakami." Some people maybe can't get behind that and still enjoy the novel, but I love it. The bizarre occurs without explanation, and the dreamlike is commonplace. He leads you from one question to the next so effectively that even when you don't circle back around for the answers, you're having too much fun to mind. And Murakami's sheer skill... His prose is excellent by default, and ranges into the beautiful. He paints a vivid picture without being overly descriptive, and he allows you to sink into a sort of flavor of a mood. There seems to be a very human understanding that bleeds through onto the page, and not just in his prose but in his character work. He taps into the heart of things, and reminds you why life's simple pleasures are pleasures in the first place. This is a man who seems to truly live, a man who knows how to take his loves and interests and inject them into a story that sticks with you. Kafka on the Shore is at its heart the inexorable, tidal pulling of two disparate storylines. That of Kafka Tamura, 15-year-old runaway haunted by a dark prophecy, and that of Satoru Nakata, an old man who suffered a childhood affliction that left him... different. How these two stories interact and interweave will leave you feeling like you're reading a riddle at times. Thematically he is playing with dreams, imagination, and responsibility. The darkness of the human subconscious. Ghosts. Memory. Time. Libraries.... Honestly, I find the book hard to capture in words, futile devices that they are. There were sections of it where I even doubted the reality of what I was reading. I mean, my favorite character in the book was probably Colonel Sanders. Do with that what you will. So much of this story takes place in that dark, ethereal labyrinth of your mind that it feels like you can only accurately explain half of it. And that second, unexplainable half is where the true magic lies. Which is, I believe, why I'm so drawn to his stories; they leave much to the imagination, and there is plenty leftover to ponder. Nothing is so tantalizing as the unknown, and Murakami understands that deeply. But as strange as the novel is at times, it really is beautiful. Emotionally effective, to say the least. I want to use the word gorgeous, even. The character work feels genuine, borderline romanticized. And the entire work is so intricately interwoven that it feels like the kind of thing you could jump right back into when you finish, which may have even been Murakami's intention. If you can't tell by the unfiltered praise, I loved this book. It belongs on my favorites shelf, I think. I don't think it's for everyone. It was overtly sexual in a way that caught me off guard, and in a way that I can imagine will make some readers uncomfortable. There are also scenes of overt, sometimes shocking, violence. But I don't fault Murakami for exploring the dark recesses of the human experience, or of stories in general. In fact, I think it would feel strange were those areas of darkness missing. Having just finished, I have that same sort of melancholic regret that I sometimes have when I finish a Ghibli movie; a long journey well-ended, characters coming full-circle with lessons learned, a strange new world that I want to stay in a little while longer. Needless to say, I'll be reading more of his work. "Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there—to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there."

Even though the book itself is beautiful, I will be giving it a bad review because some of its pages were glued together, so they would tear when I opened them.

"Kafka on the Shore" was my first Murakami book. I picked it out of pure chance, with no expectations at all, as I didn't know much about the author or the novel. After reading it from end to end in just a couple days, I couldn't prevent myself from reading, one after another, nearly all of Murakami's books in the last two months. From the beginning, it captivated me in a way no book has in a long time. Sure this isn't a book for everyone, and with this I don't want to be elitist or say it requires a certain level of philosophical awareness or knowledge to enjoy it: on the contrary. It requires being able to open your mind and forget about constrains, just accept the story as it is being told to you. The book raises many intriguing questions and offers just a few ambiguous answers for them, and many point this as a "flaw", but in fact, it's the book main motive. This is an eastern tale, and if you're familiar with things such as Zen koans, you'll understand that the fact it doesn't provide the answers is not important, because the important thing here are the questions. What the questions do to you. What they stir, how they make you feel. If this book had stirred nothing inside me, I'd easily rate it three stars. Murakami's style is neat and simple, easy to read and beatiful at some times, but certainly not as breathtaking as that of, let's say, Mishima, just to compare to another modern Japanese writer. He builds a great main character in his own way but many other characters in the book seem to be "thematic constructs", just there to make a certain point, not feeling like live people at all. And like many others have pointed out, the female characters (and this applies to most of his work) are often unrealistic succubi, seeming projections of sexual imagination more than characters at all. If you can't stand any of this nor the idea of loose ends, or feel revolted at the mention of incest, read something else. However, the way I see it, art is nothing you can analyze so easily. You can't take part by part of this book technical aspects, rate them one to ten, then make an average, like if you were choosing which is the Car of the Year. Like the book itself says, sometimes it is an "imperfect" work which somehow touches you, while other "perfect" books you can admire, yet they really left you the same you were before reading them. You may fall in love with someone you hate. You may feel better in your old small crammed apartment than in a larger, new, beautiful house. I think this is a central key to understand Murakami and enjoy it: he's not trying to write "the perfect western novel". He negates such a thing may even exist with his way of writing, and proposes you an entirely different deal. A pretty good deal, if you ask me.

The book keeps me interested with the characters most of the time. Still having a lot of questions about the past of Miss Saeki, and the mission of Nakata but the book gave me a lot of reflection of our choices and it's impact on fate. Some things is just simply meant to be.

O que falar do Murakami. Te leva para dentro de cada cena com maestria tal que o livro entra nos sonhos. Descreve os personagens e seus mecanismos interiores de maneira crua e transparente - reflete nossos defeitos e qualidades. Soma-se a isso a aula de música clássica!

Another great Murakami book. Maybe not as good as the rat trilogy or TWUBC but definitely worth the time and money. Great world building, easy prose, interesting narrative.